Heaviness, now familiar and almost welcoming to Emily, filled her chest. She lay down on her bed and scrolled through her Instagram feed, trying to imagine herself in someone else’s life. Acceptance, she thought, that’s all I wanted. When she’d gone through everyone’s posts twice, she finally opened the fifteen un-responded-to texts from Hannah asking Emily what was wrong. Her final text had asked if Emily wanted to go to a party on Saturday. Emily closed her eyes and then pressed delete on each one.
She’d spent the last week of October quarantined in her trailer. She couldn’t fathom going to another party or having another drink of alcohol again, yet somewhere deep down, she couldn’t help but yearn for something to numb the thoughts going on in her mind. She was still sore from the night with Mr. Thomas, which was a constant reminder of what happened to her, even though she was trying her hardest to forget it. She couldn’t tell anyone what happened and wouldn’t allow herself to think that was how she had lost her virginity, with a thirty-something-year-old drunk married man. To get her mind in the right space, she’d attempted to avoid social media all weekend, she’d rewatched old episodes of Friends on Netflix, and she’d even worked a bit on her big essay due the following week.
Glancing back down at her phone, she finally caved and texted Hannah back, deciding that Hannah didn’t do anything intentionally wrong to her. Hannah wasn’t the one who raped her.
“Sorry, been having major period cramps and have felt like crap,” she lied. Her period had been a couple of weeks before.
“Oh, I hear ya girl!” Hannah texted back right away. “What are you up to this weekend? Wanna babysit with me?”
Emily looked down at the question and felt her heart begin to palpitate just thinking of ever stepping back into that house again.
“I can’t this weekend I have a big essay due next week,” she texted back with trembling hands, which was the truth, she did have a big essay due. But Hannah didn’t need to know that Emily only had one page left and would probably be finished by tomorrow.
“Oh darn, I thought we could just hang out there and have a girls’ night? Popcorn and soda?” she texted back. She obviously knows something is up. Otherwise, there’s no way in hell she’d want to stay in and have a girls’ night. Especially because I heard in the hallway there’s supposed to be some big bonfire party this weekend and I think it’s near the Thomases’ house. There’s no way Hannah would want to miss that, Emily thought.
“Bummer, maybe next time? Wanna come over one night next week?” Emily texted, hoping to appease her.
“Def! Lemme know which night!” Hannah replied. It seemed to satisfy her enough, so Emily put down the phone and let out a sigh of relief. She needed to somehow think of an excuse to never babysit for the Thomases ever again. She saw her bedroom door open slightly from the corner of her eye and Nate’s head popped in.
“Wanna head to C & M for dinner?” he asked. Emily realized she was famished.
“Yes!” she exclaimed as she grabbed her purse and slipped on her shoes that were sitting by the door.
As they walked the familiar route to the bar, Emily zipped her jacket up and examined her breath as it exited her mouth, reminding her of her mom’s cigarette smoke. The extended summer they’d been having was over and it officially felt like winter.
“How was the party with Hannah last weekend?” Nate asked. Emily had expected him to bring this up. She’d been avoiding him since the night of the party so he hadn’t had alone time with her to ask any questions.
“It was good,” she muttered quickly as she rubbed her hands together and blew on them to keep warm.
“You slept at . . . Hannah’s?” he asked casually as he kicked a rock toward her. She opened her eyes wide and stared back at him quizzically. She felt terrible lying to her brother.
“Hannah’s . . . friend’s house,” she said, hoping that the shorter the answers she gave, the less he’d ask.
“Which friend?” he asked. She kicked the rock to him, trying to think up a person he would believe. Nate could always tell when she lied.
“Come on, Em,” he urged, stopping their walk as he turned toward her. “It’s me. I don’t give a shit where you slept. I just want you to tell me the truth.” He kicked the rock back in her direction.
“The place where we babysat the other night,” she admitted honestly. “Mr. Thomas’s house.” She kicked the rock back to him and it hit his shoe. She couldn’t see his face so she didn’t know what his expression might be.
“Why would you sleep there?” he asked in surprise as he slowly started walking again. “That seems really weird to have two teenage girls sleeping with a whole family at home.”
“Hannah had asked Mr. Thomas for a ride home and instead he took us to his house,” she revealed to him, omitting the fact that he took only her there because Hannah was out having sex with Topper. “His wife and kids were at their condo in Ocean City for the weekend, so he let us sleep in the guest room.”
“Why wouldn’t he just take you guys back here? You know Mom doesn’t care if you guys were drunk.”
She tried to think up an excuse but was starting to have trouble coming up with lies. “Hannah didn’t want to sleep on our couch. She wanted her own bed,” she blurted out the best excuse she could think of.
“Seems weird to me for a grown man to have two teenage girls sleep at his house. Did his wife know?” He kicked the rock toward her.
“I’m not sure,” she lied and kicked an empty beer can sitting on the side of the road as she passed by it instead of the rock. She watched as rancid beer spattered out.
“Did he try anything on you guys?” He kicked the beer can away and slowed down.
“Try anything? No.”
“Just seems creepy, Em, for a married guy with kids to have two teenage girls over. If he didn’t try anything then he might another time. If I was you, I’d steer clear of sleeping there. Tell Hannah she can sleep in my bed next time, and I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Okay,” she agreed. Nate stared at her with a concerned expression as if he knew she wasn’t telling him the whole truth. She felt guilty as if she’d done something wrong. She wanted to tell him what happened but if she did, she was worried he’d tell someone or he’d judge her. All she wanted was for him to hug her and tell her it would be okay. Instead, she kicked another rock as she hugged her arms across her body, trying to keep warm.
They approached C & M and stepped inside, feeling a rush of warmth hit their frigid bones. Charlie was sitting in his usual seat and patted the barstools next to him when he saw them enter.
“Do you ever leave here?” Nate asked him as he gave Charlie a fist bump.
“I have the prettiest bartender in all of Baltimore waiting on me. Why would I leave?” Charlie jeered with a grin. Debbie was across the room, serving crabs to three men with matching camo hunting vests on. Emily observed as one man grabbed her mom’s butt while she walked away from the table and the other two men laughed. Debbie swatted his hand away without looking behind her and then held up her middle finger in the air for them to see.
“Hi, honeys,” she said as she approached them, leaning over to give Nate and Emily each a kiss on their foreheads. “How was school? You both almost finished with your essays?”
“I finished mine,” Nate boasted.
“I have a few more sentences but should be done tonight,” Emily said. She’d been trying to work hard to get her schoolwork back on track since her grades had been dropping the past couple of weeks. It’d been so hard to focus when all she could think about was Mr. Thomas.
“Great!” Debbie exclaimed with a smile. “How did I raise such smart kids?” She poured herself a shot glass of brown liquor and slugged it back as she gave both her kids a warm smile. “Guess you got it from your father and not me. At least he was smart enough to get out of this place.” She put the shot glass down and walked over to the elderly man at the end of the bar, handing him a new beer.
At least he was smart enough to get out of this town, Emily thought.